Anyone tapping yet?

[jac]

Hi guys . Been reading these “tapping ” posts with great intrest. I get the feeling that global climate change could impact really badly on this ?? Am I right to think you need frost to have the sap run ?. Is the east side of the USA the only place these trees can thrive ?? My pancakes need answers:D
John

[mitchmaine]

hey john, the northeastern corner of north america seems to be the whole world of maple syrup. maples grow everywhere. peculiar. there must be other places maples exist along with freezing temperatures, but never heard of it. the sap in the trees freezes at night from the outside in. the sap in the center makes carbon dioxide that it can’t displace creating a positive pressure in the tree waiting to equalize itself when the tap hole thaws. the climate seems to be heading north faster than the trees can keep up. who knows? someday newfoundland might be the syrup capital of maple syrup?? after a week of dry taps it froze yesterday and is still tight. rain predicted tomorrow so maybe one more run. the buds are still tight enough. it can freeze after the tree buds out, but you won’t want to eat that syrup. best wishes, mitch

[Carl Russell]

Froze here in Central VT also, but red maple twigs are pretty bright and the buds are starting to swell. My neighbors with roadside taps have taken them all in. Wood lot sugar-bushes may be cool enough to have a few more runs.

Carl

[j_maki]

As far as geographic locations go for tapping maples, we tap maples here in Manitoba too. Our season has been pretty decent for us so far. We are having a early drawn out spring so things are still looking good here. Our trees don’t seem to have as heavy of flows as yours do out east, we seem to average 1-3 L/t/d on the average day. Last year we only were able to tap for 5 days due to a very hot and quick thaw and only two of those days were really good with 3-4L/tap. This year we have been having a couple of warmer days then a couple of cold days and so on so we are hoping for long season since we started 4 weeks earlier than usual.

We are planning of tapping some birch this year too since we will be operating a little more efficiently and its ratio is roughly 100:1. Has anyone here tried tapping birch? We haven’t talked to anybody who does simply for the fact that it takes so long to boil.

I just finnished making a “real” evaporator, boiling down in kettles was just taking to long and wasting too much wood. It still won’t be as efficient as a commercial unit but I was able to make it for under 100 bucks which was mostly for the tank of gas and stainless wire every thing else was salvaged. And to think our bylaw officer told me I had to get rid of all my “junk” last fall – he even tried to make us get rid of our laying hens- but thats another story.

Jeremy

[Carl Russell]

I have tried to tap yellow birch before, but I tapped when I tapped the sugar maples, and it never ran. I have been told since that they don’t run until after maples are done running. I would love to hear how you make out.

Carl

[mitchmaine]

penny and i tried tapping birch. our experience was it ran greater quantities than maple, boiled about 90/1 like you pointed out, and had a strong medicinal smell while boiling. the syrup was black, tasted strong, but when added to carbonated water, made wonderful birch beer. i’m not allowed to boil it anymore, cause penny got ill from the vapors while we boiled it.

[Mark Cowdrey]

Had one of our best runs of the year this afternoon. Still running when we collected between 6-8PM. Decent looking clear sap, too. You just never know in the maple business…
Mark

[Ed Thayer]

Pulled my buckets yesterday, dumped maybe 25 gallons of yellow sap on the ground. I had not collected in 8 days.

We are done. Washing buckets and tubing when the weather cooperates.

This year was a definite disapointment. only made 57 gallons of our usual 120 gallon crop.

Can’t fight mother nature I guess.

Glad to hear others have done well.

[j_maki]

About three days after posting that our season was looking pretty good it got real hot and dry. Then we got to busy with an early fire season to try and tap the birch trees this year. I guess it will just have to wait one more year.

Jeremy

[mitchmaine]

hi jeremy, can’t remember when it started, but we are a month ahead and have been since before sugaring. could have and should have tapped in february. plowing in april. seeding and others haying in may. we have about 1″ rain for may. too dry. except for a killing frost 2nd week of may that killed all the strawberry blossoms and a good deal of the apples, it’s been warm. that’s the weather from here. where are you?

mitch

[j_maki]

I’m from Manitoba Canada. Yep everything is early here too almost to early as we never seem to be ready.

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